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Don't Cancel Your Hiring Event. Take It Virtual.

With tens of millions of people suddenly working from home—or out of work entirely—we are without doubt witnessing the largest workforce transformation in living memory.

For those still hiring during the pandemic, cancelling recruiting events may seem like your only choice. It’s not. In fact, pivoting to virtual career fairs creates the same level of interaction and engagement as an in-person event. There are even some benefits you may not have considered…

Here are four key ways to get the most out of taking your recruiting event online.

Bring people together using chat

Simple chat technology is a great way to pivot away from in-person events without sacrificing the personal benefits of one-on-one conversations with job seekers. It also comes with a lot less overhead.

Virtual career fairs are many things, but complicated isn’t one of them. In other words, don’t let high production value keep you from getting started. Chat-based events keep things simple, repeatable, and scalable. Speakers, video production, and QR codes are great, but you don’t need them to capture great talent.

Successful events are easy to promote, easily capture registration and attendee data, and offer a personalized experience. Plus, it sets the stage for video interviews later on in the hiring process.

Skip the one-size-fits-all email blasts

What separates a positive hiring experience from a negative one? Most of the time it’s communication. But successful communication isn’t just about reaching out—it’s also about when and where.

Some candidates predominantly use email. Others are more responsive to texts. Still others prefer to live chat with recruiters online. When in doubt, ask candidates how they prefer to be contacted.

Text, live chat, email, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Facebook Messenger are good places to start, but be open to others based on the feedback you receive. The key is to follow up with candidates via the methods they find most convenient and engaging.

Success in action: Every year Cedar Fair’s recruiters monitor open rates and use a combination of phone calls, email, and text to keep 47,000 seasonal employees engaged—many of whom are hired weeks to months in advance of their start dates. Click here to read their story.

Be more inclusive by expanding how you reach job seekers

Virtual career fairs are particularly well-suited for one of the key challenges of contemporary talent acquisition: recruiting a workforce that better reflects the customers you serve.

Whether you’re trying to recruit more women or increase your veteran hires, digital events remove barriers to where, whom, and how you source. You’ll also have more data to draw on, giving you insights into who your candidates are and how they found you. From there, create talent pools specifically for the populations you’re trying to engage with.

Introduce candidates to your chatbot

Recruitment chatbots are one of the most effective ways to nurture candidates who are on the fence about applying without devoting additional resources to following up.

Our chatbot, ARI, answers FAQs, schedules interviews, and helps job seekers apply when ready. Recruiters can jump in and out of live conversations at any time, making it easy to juggle multiple candidates at a time.

Companies can get creative with naming and personalizing their own chatbot. RPM Pizza—the largest U.S. Domino’s franchisee—named their chatbot Dottie. This AI-enabled bot does such a good job personalizing interactions that candidates often come into the stores asking to meet Dottie. How’s that for personalized recruiting at scale?

While physical events aren’t possible right now, don’t write career events off entirely. Like other disruptive events in our history, we will come out of this together with new perspectives and ways to meet the needs of job seekers and our businesses.

Learn more about virtual recruiting and virtual hiring. Download our ebook Keep Your Business Running.

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